28 May 2010

gautengensis in the sediba phylogeny

I've highlighted the taxonomic units that Curnoe referred to Homo gautengensis. Note that, by Berger & al.'s phylogeny, Homo gautengensis is polyphyletic. Each of those units represents a single specimen, so this could potentially be explained by individual variation, age differences, sexual dimorphism, etc. Or the new species is overextended—I'm not really qualified to judge.

Note also that Homo is polyphyletic in this phylogeny. One way to fix this is to move sediba into Homo.